One of the projects I have always wanted to try is infrared photography. The main thing stopping me was the lack of a SLR Camera to use IR film with, and the lack of an old digital camera. You see, although most digital cameras’ image sensors are sensitive to infrared light, they include an infrared light filter to prevent the IR from washing out colors. In order to take infrared pictures with a digital camera, I would need to take it apart and remove this filter, and then purchase a filter to block out the visible light and only allow the infrared to pass to the sensor.
Luckily, thanks to the Internet, I discovered that overexposed, developed color film acts as such a filter. Now my only problem was that none of my digital cameras were sensitive to IR light without disassembling them (and none of them are old enough to risk junking).
However, I was bored one afternoon and tested every camera in the house with some film over the lens. The camera that worked the best was actually the one in my Clie TJ-37 PDA. The camera part of the PDA is rather low quality, and they probably saved money by omitting a filter. I fashioned a notecard into a sleeve that would position the film in front of the lens and allow me to easily switch between regular and IR photos on the camera.
Now this camera is only .3 megapixels, but the photos that come out of it are pretty cool. I hope to get my hands on an older digital camera that I wouldn’t mind breaking so I can try to take some artisitic photos in high enough resolution to print. Anyways, enjoy!
The 56k among you be warned, loading the gallery will load about half a meg of images.
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